When you hear the term massage, a lot of words may come to mind: “hands,” “healing” and maybe even “comfort.” All of these can apply, but what happens when a regular massage doesn’t do the trick? What if there were a form where therapists didn’t just use their hands? Ashiatsu Oriental Bar Therapy, which is relatively new to Austin, goes a step beyond traditional massage therapy. It incorporates an even more useful tool: the feet.

Ashiatsu, an ancient form of foot massage, literally means “foot” (ashi) and “pressure” (atsu) in Japanese. The westernized version is quickly becoming a trend in the massage realm. This method takes the ancient form and replaces a floor mat with a padded massage table while a therapist is suspended from bars on the ceiling.

After experiencing something as surprisingly effective as a foot in your back, you may not need to go back to traditional massage. The founder, Ruthie Hardee, created it with the goal of ultimate comfort and repair for the recipient as well as the therapist. She stumbled upon Ashiatsu one day while working on a movie set, when she was too spent to give her last client the pressure he needed. Unbeknownst to him, Hardee hung from the ceiling and gave the entire massage using her feet. Six years later, Hardee introduced the first barefoot Swedish massage using bars on the ceiling to mainstream America.

Rhonda Kachilla, an Ashiastu instructor at Massage Harmony, is one of two licensed instructors in the state of Texas. Like Ruthie Hardee, her discovery of Ashiastu was purely coincidental. Kachilla was a deep tissue therapist, and she could only perform a few massages a day — going home with muscle spasms, over-extended wrists and needing ice to soothe her sore body parts. One night her husband could not massage her with enough pressure, so in a moment of desperation, she asked him to use his feet. Her muscles began to unwind and she felt relaxed. Like Hardee, she found a method more potent than her own, and it required using none of her aching parts.

Why are the feet more effective than the hands? This method provides more control for the therapist and longer strokes over the body. Using the pressure of the therapist’s feet creates soft tissue that surrounds the muscles and disc space around the spine. The foot makes it simple to work out knots created by years of tense muscles.

“Because of the shape of the foot, it provides a much broader surface,” Kachilla says. “Deeper pressure can be applied without it being pokey like a thumb or elbow. It’s a more comfortable, relaxing, deep pressure instead of being painful.”

Immediately she found training classes to become certified. This excited Kachilla because she could do something she had never done before.

“I can go from the ankle to the shoulder in one movement, applying force that’s assisted by gravity,” she says. “Muscle fibers tend to relax more when you massage from origin to insertion, all the way to the end.”

Ashiatsu Oriental Bar Therapy is ideal for athletes and chronic pain sufferers for these reasons. It’s difficult to tell the physical difference between a hand and a foot during the massage: the only difference is a more intense, yet soothing therapy.

“I feel really blessed that I was given the opportunity to bring something different to the Austin alternative healing scene: healing that doesn’t hurt the therapist,” Kachilla says. “Now I can give a massage like a 300-pound Swedish woman.”

Thanks to Ashiatsu, which she refers to as “Tai Chi for the body,” she now has fitter legs and has extended the life of her career indefinitely. Kachilla can now give eight massages in a day at Massage Harmony, totally consequence-free. She’s no longer in pain, and neither are her clients. Their appreciative stories are rewards all on their own.

“To have someone say, ‘Since I’ve been coming to see you, It’s been three months since I’ve had a cortisone injection,’ or ‘I just ran yesterday for the first time in five years because my legs don’t hurt,’ — that’s just amazing to me,” she says.

For more information about Ashiatsu, visit deepfeet.com. And to give it a try, visit massageharmony.com.


Why the Feet?

Feet have a larger, flatter surface so there is a larger tool to work with

Weight of the therapist’s lower body applies longer, deeper, more sustained pressure to your muscles

Deeper pressure facilitates breaking up muscular knots that can’t be broken up by traditional massage
it helps the therapist in the long run: there is less strain and damage to their body

Using the feet is more intense but less invasive

Standing on a client gives longer, more effective, lengthy strides: which takes a lot less effort for the therapist.